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Topic: Handling of Various Artists releases (Read 3625 times)

I recently switched to gmusicbrowser and I think it's really great. However, there is one thing that my previous music player (Amarok) handled in what seemed to me a more satisfying way: Various Artist releases.

Amarok recognises multiple artist releases (e.g. compilations, mixes, etc.) with reference only to the "artist" and "album" fields in the tag. If tracks have matching "album" fields in the tag but the "artist" fields are non-identical it recognises it as a Various Artists release, and thus filters the tracks out of the main alphabetical list, instead grouping them together at the top of the Artist panel under the heading "Various Artists".

The above method has always struck me as elegant since it neither requires users to add a special "Part of a compilation" tag, nor to utilise some workaround such as entering "Various Artists" in the "album artist" field.

Is there any chance you'd consider implementing this method of V/A handling?

I've been thinking about this, and I might change this. The main reason it behaves this way, is that you can add guest artist in the artist field ("A & B") without having to use the album_artist field. But that method is far from perfect and I'm thinking about supporting multiple artists in a better way. The method you describe has the advantage (in addition to being used by other players) of making album always have a simple and easy to find "artist" value (either album_artist or artist from any of its tracks), which would make things easier/better in a few places.

I initially wanted to implement different "album identification" schemes, such as the current one and the one you are talking about, and others using a unique album id like the musicbrainz one. But it was a bit messy to implement, and is probably not really needed, a simple album_name + artist_name scheme to identify albums should be enough in (almost?) every case.

So I'm going to think about it some more but I think I'll make the change, maybe I'll wait until I have a good multiple artist system in mind.

There's one case, however, when this doesn't work. If there are two albums with the same album title. Happens rarely, but it happens. Then tracks from those albums would be merged together although they don't belong together. That's why the tag 'album artist' exists, exactly for that reason. People have to tag their albums properly, then there's no problem. And with gmusicbrowser it's a piece of cake to correct/add tags.